ON July 5, 1992
The Sunday
Times, London's
most prestigious weekend broadsheet, revealed that it had
bought from David Irving the key passages of the
missing Goebbels Diaries which he had brought back from
Moscow the day before. There was outrage from the Jewish
community, for many reasons (caused not least by editor
Andrew Neil's bovine publicity campaign). A three-week
cacophony by these bodies began, designed to pressure the
newspaper to violate its contract with Mr Irving and not
pay him the substantial sums due -- they buckled, he
fought them in the High Court for breach of contract, but
that is another story. On July 12, 1992, the day the
serialisation of the diaries began,
The Sunday
Times published an
editorial and two articles backing Mr Irving -- one by a
rabbi, and one by
Barbara
Amiel, a
forceful journalist who had married Canadian newspaper
tycoon Conrad
Black, monied
proprietor of (among others)
The Daily
Telegraph and
The
Spectator. Miss
Amiel's job was to make Mr Irving "salonfähig", not
a task for which her fellow-Jews would award her many
Brownie points. She tackled it with gusto.

July 12, 1992, Page 2/4

FEATURES

When a Jew can trust
David Irving

by Barbara Amiel

FIRST
let me say how silly I feel in starting a column this way.
But, when writing about anything to do with Nazis, one can't
be too careful. Thus: I am a Jew. My father fought the Nazis
with distinction in the British Eighth Army. I know only too
well that the Holocaust took place and count its victims and
first-hand survivors among my former in-laws and dearest
friends. I am convinced in my own mind that David
Irving, the revisionist historian, is a nutcase.

This is one of many telephone calls I received last week:
"Hello, Barbara. I know that you must be facing a real moral
crisis about the Sunday Times's use of Irving. What
are you going to do?" When my Jewish Chronicle
arrived last Friday, a measured editorial told me that my
employer's use of Irving was "an insult to the Jews" and its
headline story quoted Judge Israel Finestein of the
British Board of Deputies
expressing "astonishment". This is my view. I understand why
Jews are having a fit over the use of Irving believe me, I
understand but I have no patience with it.

My argument, of course, proceeds on the basis of what my
newspaper has represented to me in answer to my questions,
and I assume what they tell me is true because (a) I don't
know anything to the contrary and (b) none of the critics of
The Sunday Times has claimed anything to the
contrary.

David
Irving found out that the complete microplates of the
Goebbels diaries were in
Moscow. He tipped off The Sunday Times. Moscow, these
days, is rather like the Klondike and the Moscow archives
are a goldmine for competing prospectors.

The Institute of Contemporary History in Munich actually
discovered the complete diaries there a few months ago and
had negotiated for the rights. But before they had a chance
to microfilm the glass plates on which the diaries are
engraved, Irving talked his way in with the aid of The
Sunday Times and scooped them. In retaliation, the
Munich institute passed the Daily Mail some
unpublished extracts from pages of Goebbels's diaries it got
in 1990 from East Germany.

The problem with the use of
Irving, for me, was simple. Irving is one of those
infuriating people who researches everything and draws
utterly wrong conclusions. Only Irving would read every
single memo between the German secret police and the
Gestapo and truly know that they contain no reference to
Hitler's order to eliminate the Jews. But he cannot see
that this is beside the point: the Holocaust happened
whether or not it exists in memos and whether or not
Irving believes there were gas chambers.

The
bodies of Jews piled like cordwood on handcarts in Warsaw,
Budapest and Cracow were seen, recorded, and is the
Holocaust and cannot be denied. Irving has conceded that two
million Jews were liquidated, but he blames Hitler's
subordinates and uses historical material selectively to
exonerate the Fuhrer. How can one trust the judgment of such
a person in the Goebbels project? One does it by making sure
that his judgment is not used. Irving photopied all material
he transcribed, which could then be checked. He has not been
allowed to interpret or comment on the material. This
reduces his role to a purely mechanical one. How can we be
sure he did not ignore material inconvenient to his apologia
for Hitler? I suppose we can never be 100% sure, but he was
accompanied in the archives at all times by a German and
Russian speaking "minder" from The Sunday Times.
Irving was also given detailed instructions by the paper of
what to get from the diaries.

Why use a man of whom we can never be 100% sure? Well,
the project was his, alas. It did not come to The Sunday
Times from Joachim Fest or Gordon Craig,
alas. Furthermore, I think there is a fundamental principle
here. David Irving has a skill as an archivist of the Third
Reich that has been recognised by historians from Lord
Dacre to Peter
Pulzer. Are we now to boycott the use of people in
their areas of expertise because we disapprove of their
political views?

It is as easy for experts to go nutty as it is for any
other human being, but this may not impair their special
abilities. When Howard Hughes went mad he did not
stop being a fine pilot and businessman. I watched Glen
Gould in a New York recording studio practising with
gloves on, but that did not prevent him from being the
finest Bach pianist. I would not hire Hitler to paint my
house if there were other housepainters around, but if
Hitler had simply written Mein Kampf and was an
anti-semite, I would not ban him as a housepainter.

Were
there other historians around who could have done the job?
Apparently the writing of Goebbels is difficult to read
(this is confirmed in the preface to Hugh
Trevor-Roper's The Goebbels Diaries) and The Sunday
Times could not find anyone else. This is one area where I
think The Sunday Times may be a little disingenuous.
David Irving was bound to attract controversy. I'm not sure
how many people would have flocked to read the Goebbels
diaries if they had simply been attached to a sombre
historian. Newspapers are in circulation wars and I can't
help thinking The Sunday Times would not run from the
exposure Irving brings.

Is that wrong? No. Is it a moral outrage? No, provided
all safeguards are in place to see that Irving is only a
technician and that his role is clearly explained to the
readers and that responsible historians annotate, check and
interpret the diary selections. Does it give credibility to
Irving and help resurrect Nazism in the world? I don't think
so.

What has helped Nazism in the world apart from the deep
seated anti-semitism that exists perennially together with
the deep attraction totalitarianism has for some people
(such as Irving) has been the extraordinary guilt we have
placed on Germany since the first world war. The punitive
provisions of the Versailles treaty and the assignment of
moral guilt on all Germans for the Kaiser's war
certainly helped the Nazis.

Was the use of Irving vulgar? Yes. And if you want to
create a stink you must wallow in it along with the
attention it brings. Finally, the question is: are the
self-serving diaries of Goebbels worth all this? Goebbels,
after all, invented the modern notion of propaganda and the
Big Lie. But, like many people, I am interested in what goes
on in the minds of totalitarians and, self-serving though
his prose may be, it is possible that Goebbels will be
revealing in a manner he would never have understood.

I wish there had been another way than using Irving.
Paying such a man creates a very emotive reaction in me. But
going nuts over it is as nutty as David Irving himself.